


Getting To Know You

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Spoilers for Episode 145, Talk about religion, slight backstory speculation, slightly future fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22633519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: “Mind some company?” Cel’s voice breaks into Zolf’s thoughts like a crossbow bolt through a glass window, unexpected but not surprising. They had mentioned the possibility of having a drink before bed, and Zolf wonders now if he’d actually been waiting for them to arrive.
Relationships: Celiquillithon "Cel" Sidebottom & Zolf Smith
Comments: 16
Kudos: 61





	Getting To Know You

**Author's Note:**

> Between episode 142 where Cel and Zolf have that brief conversation where Cel thinks Zolf could be cheerier and episode 145 where Zolf mentions he's gotten into an argument with a god and Cel counters with the fact that they've been in several warzones, well, I just really wanted to write a conversation between these two.

Zolf sits at the bar, staring into his cup of sake just as he has been since he poured it, however long ago that had been. After taking down Shoin and sitting through a debrief from Wilde, a drink had sounded like an excellent idea, and yet he hasn’t taken a single sip. He’s past tired, but it’s not the kind of tired that makes him long for bed, though that’s where he knows he should be right now. That or a bath, though the thought holds about as much appeal for him as trying to get to sleep does. Never mind that he feels all over encrusted with salt, or that he still smells like burnt leather from when he had been twice hit by lightning. He still loves the ocean and the water despite everything, but he wants a break from being wet, even though hot water and soap are a far cry from being freezing and soaked during a typhoon. The rain has stopped, the winds outside are quieting down, and Zolf suddenly realizes how quiet the inn is without those sounds.

“Mind some company?” Cel’s voice breaks into Zolf’s thoughts like a crossbow bolt through a glass window, unexpected but not surprising. They had mentioned the possibility of having a drink before bed, and Zolf wonders now if he’d actually been waiting for them to arrive.

“Was wondering if you’d make it down here,” Zolf says, setting down his untouched cup of sake to pour one for Cel. “Have a seat.”

Cel does so, running a hand through their still damp hair before accepting the cup. They’ve had a bath and traded their leathers for one of the inn’s blue cotton robes, tied firmly with a black sash at the waist. There’s a bit of scarring visible up near their collarbone, a branching Lichtenberg scar that Zolf knows goes down their entire arm to end at the back of their right hand. “Thank you!” Cel says with enthusiasm, draining the cup in two swallows and holding it back out to be refilled. Zolf chuckles and obliges before reaching for his own cup again, not wanting to be outdone. He’d prefer whiskey if he’s being honest, but the inn only has sake and plum wine, so he’ll take what he can get.

“Sooooooo,” Cel draws out the word.“You got into an argument with a god once?”

Zolf raises an eyebrow. “I did. If I recall, you didn’t seem terribly impressed by that when I mentioned it earlier.”

“I mean, I just don’t find gods very impressive in general,” Cel says dismissively. “I mean, they _exist_ , sure, I know that, and they have powers and they help _some_ people when they ask, just like they say your dragons do, but, like…” Cel trails off for a moment, rapidly tapping their fingers on the bar as they try to find the words. “People do that too. They help others or harm others and some of them do amazing and wonderful things to try and make the world better and some of them do amazing and terrible things to make the world better for _themselves_ and worse for everyone else.” Cel takes a swallow of their sake. “My village, those people, they prayed every day for the storms to stop, you know? Not to Poseidon, of course. Not a big one over here. Different lands, different gods. They prayed for _years,_ left fish and rice as offerings at shrines even when food was scarce. But it wasn’t the gods who caused the storms, and it wasn’t the gods who stopped them.” They finish off their sake and pour another. Zolf does the same.

“There’s people who’d argue that the gods sent us to stop the storms,” Zolf says. “I mean, I’m not _one_ of them. I probably wouldn’t have been one of them even when I was on speaking terms with Poseidon, really.”

“I mean—“ Cel gestures broadly with the hand not holding their cup of sake. “People can _believe_ whatever they want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else and they don’t get all pushy about it. That’s fine. I just think— I think gods aren’t better than people, that’s what I’m saying.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Zolf says, and does. He’s surprised to find that he’s already getting a bit of a buzz from the alcohol. When was the last time they had eaten anything? Maybe he should do something about that.

“So what’d you get into a fight with a god about?” Cel asks, coming back around to their original question. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, I’m just curious. Always curious, that’s me. Curious, curious me.”

Zolf sighs. His right leg is beginning to ache, except of course it’s the _memory_ of his leg that hurts, as his adamantine legs are incapable of feeling pain. He rubs at the place where his flesh and the prosthetic meet, as if that would soothe it. “It’s a long story.”

Cel puts their chin in their hand and smiles. “I like those.”

“No, I mean it’s _really_ long.” Zolf takes a sip of sake to buy himself some time and sees Cel’s smile fade the tiniest bit.

“If I’m being annoying, just _tell_ me, okay? I don’t always pick up on subtle stuff when I’m really focused on something, and then suddenly I’m getting yelled at, and then _I_ start yelling because that’s what happens when I’m upset and I don’t want to be yelled at and I don’t want to yell at you. You’re my friend. My new friend.” Cel’s voice rises slightly in pitch, their words starting to run together. “We could talk about literally anything else if you want, like how awesome it is to get struck by lightning, or I could ask you what it was like to get swallowed by that big ooze golem thing we fought, or I could just go?” Cel half rises from the bar stool. “I could just go.”

“Cel, no, you don’t—“ Zolf reaches out his hand to stop them, then thinks better of it and lets his hand fall back to his knee. Grabbing someone when they’re upset was never a good way to deescalate a situation. “You’re not being annoying, I promise. It just _really_ is a long story and I was trying to figure out how to tell it without it taking several hours. I mean, we need to sleep sometime.”

“I mean, _you_ do,” Cel says, rolling their eyes slightly as they sit back down. Their posture looks a bit tense, but relief has replaced the wariness in Cel’s expression for the most part. “I can sleep for four hours, down a few potions and be sketching plans and building things while everyone else spends another four hours _asleep._ Wasted time if you ask me. And sure, maybe sometimes that means I fall asleep in the middle of the day, and sometimes it’s while I’m brewing a potion and then whoops it’s on the flame too long and suddenly the lab is filled with smoke that turns everything _purple—“_

Zolf pinches the bridge of his nose. “We’re going to have a talk about proper sleeping habits, but not now, because it’s not like _I’m_ asleep either. So. Right. Story time.”

Cel adopts their listening posture again, chin in one hand and sake cup in the other. “Ready when you are.”

“Okay. So. Short version. Was in the Navy, ship sank, almost died, kinda pledged myself to Poseidon, kinda became a pirate. Lost my left leg, had a metal peg leg for a bit. It wasn’t _great_ , but it mostly got me where I needed to go.” He doesn’t talk about the pain, the frustration, the feeling of always being left behind. He remembers a warehouse, bodies and blood, the absolute certainty that he was too late to save anyone. “Stopped being a pirate and became a regular mercenary instead, formed a mercenary group with some people that— well, Hamid’s the only one of them left now, I suppose.” He doesn’t feel bad about Bertie, maybe he should but he doesn’t. Sasha… he’s not going to think about Sasha right now, how he left her behind and let her down. “Then the whole Simulacrum thing happened, you know about most of that, went to Paris, got my other leg crushed in the catacombs under Notre Dame, had the damaged leg removed by an artificial intelligence powered by human brains—“

Cel half raises their hand. “Don’t mean to interrupt but this artificial intelligence thing sounds _really_ interesting—“

“Not now,” Zolf says firmly. “Some other night when I’ve had more sleep and more alcohol. Lots more alcohol.”

“Going to hold you to that.”

“Right. So anyway. The artificial intelligence did me up a pair of fancy metal legs which I refused to wear because it just… just didn’t feel right. Skip ahead, we’ve killed the AI because it decided that maybe it should be in charge of running things and that to do that it’d have to have more brains so it’d have enough power to control the minds of the Meritocrats, that’s one of the things it could do, mess around with memories and make people do things—“

“Okay, _don’t_ like that,” Cel mutters. “Don’t like that at all.”

“We weren’t big fans of it either,” Zolf says. “So we killed it, basically, eventually, which kinda saved the world while fucking it up at the same time because the whole reason the brain computer existed in the first place was to help run the banks and a bunch of other things. There were riots going on and food was getting scarce and during all that, I— I was feeling pretty useless. Spent a lot of time praying. Lot of time crying, lot of time being angry.” He goes to take another sip of sake and realizes his cup is empty again. He refills it and pushes the rest toward Cel, who takes the flask without a word.

“And then I had a dream. I was on this boat in the middle of the ocean and Poseidon showed up and threw his trident into my boat and— he wouldn’t talk to me. I asked questions and I yelled and he wouldn’t say anything, just looked at me. Then the boat vanished and I was flailing in the water and Poseidon was just still standing there _looking_ at me. His trident was floating in front of me and I knew he wanted me to grab it. And I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be— it felt like I was being blackmailed or something. So I didn’t grab it. I just sank under the water.”

Cel isn’t saying anything, the only sound coming from them is the tapping of their fingers against the side of the sake flask.

“Next night, same dream, except this time Poseidon was huge and then he was small and he was holding out his hand to me. He still wouldn’t talk to me. If he had, if he had ever once just opened his damn mouth and we could have had a _conversation_ —“

“Your head might have exploded,” Cel says quietly, and Zolf would have thought Cel was joking except for the fact that their tone is devoid of any humor. He just stares at them as they continue.

“I mean, I’ve never _seen_ it happen, but some people think that’s why gods communicate with their followers through dreams and symbolism and that sort of thing. Cause if a god ever spoke directly to you it’d be so powerful that—” Cel mimes an explosion with one hand next to their head. “Just because I’m not a big fan of gods doesn’t mean I’m not interested in learning about them. Can’t form a good opinion on something if you don’t know anything about it. Funny how a lot of people can’t wrap their head around that.” They give a sort of half chuckle. “You were saying?”

“Ummm. Right.” Zolf struggles to find his train of thought again. “So Poseidon is standing there, hand outstretched and I’m telling him that I don’t think I can be what he wants me to be, some great holy crusader or whatever, but I ended up taking his hand anyway. Maybe I just wanted the dreams to stop. Maybe I thought if I just tried hard enough everything would make sense. My head was such a mess back then. I woke up and the bedroom was flooded and I had— I had legs. Legs made out of sea water. Legs I hadn’t asked for, that I didn’t want, something that could be taken away at any moment if I did something he didn’t like. They weren’t— they were part of me but they weren’t _mine._ ”

Cel’s face darkens. “Expected you to be grateful I bet. And he _did_ take them back.”

“He did,” Zolf agrees. “It’s the one time I felt he was actually _listening_ to me. The first time and the last time. I spent about a year sailing around, trying to figure out what was going on with the weather, and I ended up here, working with Wilde and it felt like… like I was finally doing something right. And one night I was lying awake in bed, listening to the storm and I knew I was _done_ with Poseidon. I walked down to the beach and I remember shouting over the wind and the waves that we were done, that this wasn’t working, that it wasn’t ever _going_ to work.”

“Sounds like you two had a very tempestuous break up,” Cel says, and for a moment the two of them just stare at each other and then they’re both laughing, the long, loud laughter of the drunk and the exhausted, only making any sort of effort to stop when they hear someone yelling at them through the wall. Cel yells something back in Japanese, still laughing.

Zolf hadn’t realized how heavy the tension in the air had been until it was gone. He grins at Cel. “I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that.”

Cel tilts their head with a grin and gives a little mock bow. “Glad to be of service. So what happened after you broke up with Poseidon?”

Zolf takes a breath and the words are easier in his mouth than they had been a moment before. “Woke up here in bed two days later with no legs to speak of. Apparently I managed to drag myself across the beach and all the way up to the front door, not that I remember any of that. One minute I was screaming at a god on a beach, the next I was looking down at my complete lack of legs, trying to figure out if I should be laughing or crying about the whole situation. Turned out there were already some trusted folks working on trying to make things out of the Simulacrum tech that weren’t, you know, more Simulacrums. Took them a bit but—“ Zolf knocks a fist against his leg, producing a dull metallic sound. “They’ve been holding up so far.”

Cel’s eyes light up. “Can I— ask questions about them? I won’t if it’ll make you uncomfortable. I mean I don’t normally go around asking people things about their bodies, obviously, and they’re still _your_ legs even if you can take them off.”

“Sure? I mean, I don’t know if I’ll have any good answers for you. The technical stuff was a bit over my head and the magic is well—“ Zolf shrugs. “It’s magic.”

“Are they comfortable? They fit okay?”

“They’re not like having my old legs or anything, but they’re as comfortable as they can be. They fit properly too. You know how magic armor grows or shrinks to fit you? It’s like that.”

Cel nods. “Does it have like— it must have something like ankle joints, right? I mean, I’ve seen you running and climbing and I couldn’t even _tell_. I can do a passable ankle if I have the metal and the equipment to make all the springs and gears and I have sketches for hands with like, proper fingers that I think could work if I had enough wire, but most of the places I’ve been all I’ve had to work with is wood mostly, and there’s only so much you can do with wood.”

Zolf blinks, taking a moment to process Cel’s fast flowing river of words. “Wait. Wait. Are you saying you’ve built prosthetics before?”

“I _did_ tell you I’ve been in a lot of war zones,” Cel says matter of factly.

“Well yeah, but I thought— no, I _assumed_ that you were, you know, spending your time fighting.”

Cel grins, bright and sharp as a knife. “Well, you know what happens when you assume things. You— make an ass out of yourself?” Their brow furrows. “That’s not it. Or maybe it is. _Anyway_ , sure, yeah, I did my fair amount of fighting when I had to. Sometimes that’s what people need, someone to fight for them. But mostly there were other ways I could help. Brewing healing potions, or potions to make people forget about their pain for a little while, or making things. Sometimes those things were legs.” The grin falls from their face slowly, their gaze growing distant, their voice growing softer. “There’s a kind of explosive trap someone came up with that you can bury underground, and when you walk over it, or sometimes even near it, it goes off. Most people would just be killed outright by a thing like that. Not— not always though. If they lived through the blood loss and the shock— sometimes I could help…“

Zolf has seen Cel be a lot of things over the course of their short time together, happy and angry, sad and anxious and uncomfortable. The expression on their face now, though he’s never seen it on them before, he recognizes because he’s seen it on himself enough times, in mirrors. Haunted.

 _“I’m just saying that like, we could be in the moment, because you never know what’s going to happen next.”_ Cel’s voice echoes in his memory.

 _“Not all of us can have your sunny disposition,”_ Azu had replied, her voice sounding like stone beginning to crack under pressure.

_“It took a while to get there.”_

Zolf isn’t prone to sudden flights of fantasy, but he finds himself picturing a scene with perfect clarity. Cel walking among the wounded with a reassuring smile, their voice gentle as they do the best they can to help in whatever way they can manage.

“Cel?” Zolf reaches out very slowly and puts a gentle hand on Cel’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“Hmm?” Cel blinks at Zolf before giving him a tentative, crooked smile. “Oh, it’s _fine._ I’m fine.” They give Zolf’s hand on their shoulder a little reassuring squeeze, then wipe at their eyes with the hem of their sleeve, even though they hadn’t been crying. “I’ll be fine.”

“Listen—“ Zolf starts to say, then stops. He should tell Cel that they should go get some sleep. _He_ should go get some sleep himself. And yet. “Are you hungry?”

Cel’s smile firms up around the edges. “Oh always. I have the metabolism of something very fast. A hummingbird maybe, except I don’t think flower nectar is really that tasty at all. Hummingbirds eat spiders too though, and some of _those_ aren’t too bad if you fry them up proper.”

“Right. I’ll keep that in mind.” Zolf hops off the bar stool and goes back behind the bar. “More sake?”

“ _Please._ ”

Zolf refills the sake flask before ducking into the kitchen for a bit of a rummage. “How do you feel about pickled octopus? There’s a jar of it back here.”

Zolf hears Cel gasp. “I can’t eat _octopus._ ”

“Why not? They’re delicious!”

“They’re nearly _people._ They can reason, and they’re wicked clever. I used to have one as a pet, and I had to keep making modifications to the lid of his tank to prevent him from escaping otherwise he’d climb out and steal my tools.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m really not.”

“Fine then, how about eggs? Got any moral objections about chicken eggs?”

“Not a one. Tasty and full of protein. Like spiders.”

“Omelette rice it is then.” Zolf grabs the appropriate frying pan. “So whatever happened to this pet octopus of yours?”

“One morning I woke up and he was just gone. Took my best wrench with him.”

Tomorrow Zolf will try to sit everyone down and have a long talk about healthy coping mechanisms and why a full night’s rest is important. He is one hundred percent sure that Cel is going to roll their eyes a bit and give him a Look, but he’s also pretty sure they’re going to smile while they do it. Maybe he will too.

**Author's Note:**

> Eagerly awaiting the actual aftermath of this upcoming boss fight where I'm sure I'll be overcome by Feelings.
> 
> I'm angel-ascending on Tumblr and angel_in_ink on Twitter if y'all want to come over and say hi!


End file.
